


(maybe it's the finnish summer) got me seeing stars when I'm with you

by up_and_away



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Anal Sex, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Recreational Drug Use, author has never been to finland but is Trying Her Best, in that two characters have consensual sex while under the influence, post playoff recovery, real life girlfriend mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-02 07:58:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19437223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/up_and_away/pseuds/up_and_away
Summary: After they get eliminated, Miro can't bring himself to go home and face his parents' sympathy. He goes home with Roope instead, and finds a way to exhale.





	(maybe it's the finnish summer) got me seeing stars when I'm with you

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [venvephe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venvephe/pseuds/venvephe) in the [PuckingRare2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/PuckingRare2019) collection. 



> title (modified) from the english summer by the wombats
> 
> **Prompt:**
> 
> After the end of the season, after the playoff run - they find the time to breathe.
> 
> Anything soft around recovering over the summer (from injuries, from the heartbreak of their season coming to an end, up to you!) as well as mutual pining/crushing turning into something more! Bonus points for lots of summer imagery and tender moments.  
>    
> hope this is something like what you were hoping for and that you enjoy!  
> a couple notes: if irl girlfriends being mentioned by name bothers you, you might give this a pass! no cheating takes place but miro's girlfriend comes up a few times. also, consensual sex occurs between two characters who have both consumed small amounts of alcohol and smoked weed. if this reads as non-consensual at all and you feel it needs to be tagged more clearly, please let me know!
> 
> if you've found this fic by googling yourself or someone you know, please exit. it's for the best for both of us.

Miro scores two goals in his first playoff game.

He’s been told by guys up and down the league how the playoffs are different, that there’s nothing like them. He’s gotten advice from Tyler about what a playoff run in your first year in the league is—surreal and terrifying, according to him. But they play game one in Nashville and Miro thinks, this is just hockey. This is what he knows how to do.

There are plenty of things he doesn’t know how to do. Making his girlfriend want to stay is one of them.

Before the series started, he went into their bedroom to pack a bag for Nashville and found hers already sitting on the bed. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “I want to go home.”

He couldn’t pretend not to understand. He ached for Finland in a consistent beat, settling deeper in his chest every time his English fails him or he’s sick of Texan food or he sees families walking together. He’s nineteen and he’s in a foreign country. He didn’t even get to go home for Christmas.

Sometimes, though, he had looked at Julia and felt that ache dull. He thought the two of them could build a home in Dallas. He thought she agreed.

He can look in her eyes and see that she doesn’t. He tries, half-heartedly, to say, “I’m coming home soon. I can be there with you.”

“You’re never coming home, Miro. Not really.”

He can’t argue with her, because if he gets what he wants, he never will.

They make it through the first round. They win it in six and at home, which is a better feeling than Miro could have possibly imagined. He screams and gives out hugs and kisses helmets and cheeks. He’s helped them get here. He’s been scoring in his first playoff series and now they’re going to the second round.

There are only three days between them and the first game against St. Louis. Some of the guys are getting drunk anyway, but Miro gravitates towards Roope, who can often be persuaded away from an outing with an older age tilt.

“Do you want to go drink beer at my apartment? I can’t get into a club anyway.”

Roope smiles at him. “Won’t Julia mind? I'd hate to bother her pretty little dogs and pretty white coffee table.”

It’s a smiling objection, having become a well-worn one now after Roope being here for large parts of the season. Julia had liked that there were other guys from Finland. She’d wanted to be friends with them.

Didn’t make much of a difference, he supposes.

“She’s,” Miro starts awkwardly, “won’t mind. Um, she’s not home.”

Roope’s eyebrows rise slightly. He hasn’t missed Miro being more awkward than normal.

“Just come over,” Miro says.

Roope shrugs. “Guess I can come drink the beer I bought you.”

The apartment’s been stripped down to basics. Mostly it’s furniture at this point. No dogs or sundry supplies and definitely no extraneous decorations that were easy to pack up and ship away. Once Miro steps in next to Roope and imagines it through his eyes it’s such an obvious shell that he wonders how he hadn’t seen it before.

“Did she-” Roope doesn’t finish the sentence, just looks over at Miro.

“Yeah. She’s going back to Helsinki.”

Roope looks like he’ll say more, but for once, he doesn’t. “You mentioned beer?”

They lose it in St. Louis.

Everything in between is white noise. He’s either on the ice playing or he’s trying to dodge a well-meaning attempt to cheer him up. Esa’s constantly trying to start a conversation; Klinger takes him to dinner in an attempt to make Miro “loosen up.”

There’s a small bright flare of panic that breaks through when Roope breaks his foot in the sixth game, but then he finds out he’s going to play through it, and all Miro can think is, “good, we need him.”

They need more, and they don’t have it. They take it to a second overtime in St. Louis but it’s only by the grace of Bishop, who could have been out there by himself all evening and seen similar results.

One goal and it’s over.

They go home.

Miro’s plans for the summer had all been vague. He figured he was going to see his girlfriend’s family, then his own, then they would probably go on vacation together.

Now, he can hardly bring himself to call his parents. They’re perfectly empathetic, but the sadness in their voices chafes. He’d like to be anywhere but with them, being cared for, being comforted.

He’d like it if he had been better so he wouldn’t have to be comforted.

“I think I’ll—train here for a while? I might spend some time with the guys before they all leave for the summer. Uh, Roope’s hurt. And I’ve still got the apartment, so, you know.”

His mother continues to be lovely. “Take as long as you need. We’ll be here when you’re ready to come home.”

It’s impossible to explain to her that Espoo stopped being his home a while ago. It’d be even harder to communicate that he’s not positive Dallas loves him back the way he wanted it to, either. He says thank you, and that he loves her.

Locker cleanout day is all of the attention and empathy that had chafed coming from his parents amplified and made less sincere. There’s no way to dodge journalists, but he remains vague. He’s disappointed. He’d wanted to go deeper. There would be another season.

Esa keeps saying insulting things in Finnish about every reporter in attendance, which helps Miro remember to breathe.

Jamie corrals them all into a group dinner. A lot of the guys are going to Vegas after, he knows, but Miro couldn’t think of anything more exhausting. He can’t look every member of the team in the eyes as he parties in Vegas knowing that he hadn’t been good enough to get them where they wanted to be.

Roope latches onto him before dinner, sliding an arm around his shoulders. He’s wearing a leopard print t shirt and is uninterested in Miro’s feelings on personal space, which he’s heard about plenty before.

“You look ridiculous,” Miro tells him, because if his style ever got _worse_ the league might get a poor impression of Finns in general.

Roope seems to take it as a compliment. “Don’t be jealous. You make boring look good.”

Whenever he’s been up in Dallas, Roope’s been needling at Miro. They’d always missed each other in tournaments, running in similar circles but never falling in the exact same age group. He doesn’t think it would’ve mattered if they had been, though. Miro’s serious, reserved. There’s a single-minded focus that he needs in a tournament. Roope’s always been the dressing room guy, the favorite of everyone on the team. His hockey’s good, but it’s secondary to his charisma.

With Roope only around for parts of the season, though, it’s easy for a simple thing like being from the same country to become a catalyst for friendship. And anyway, as much as Roope’s individual attention can be a lot to handle, Miro mostly likes him.

They end up at a table with Tyler and Jamie. Miro quite likes them both. If it weren’t for the fact that this whole day has him out of sorts, he would be glad to end up next to them.

As it is, he mostly lets them talk.

“You know, I didn’t know how much of a playoff warrior you were gonna turn into,” Jamie tells Roope, not long into dinner. “Stuffing that broken foot into the skate, it’s impressive.”

Tyler nods enthusiastically. “Fuckin beauty move, Roope.” He says his name incorrectly, but he always has. Miro thinks it’s a little funny how awkward Roope always looks, making the decision on whether he should expend the effort of correcting Tyler or not. Usually he doesn’t.

“If I can stay out of Frisco next season I’ll consider it well done,” Roope says. “Gotta let the thing heal up this summer. Doctor says I ought to spend at least a couple weeks resting it, not walking around much. Don’t really see that happening, though.”

That catches Miro’s attention, much as he’s felt like this conversation would be better conducted without his input. “You should listen to your doctor.”

Roope rolls his eyes. “Well obviously, Miro. But my parents are going on vacation without me, said it would’ve been an insult to invite me to come along this early in the summer. I’ll just be nursing myself back to health, it seems.”

Miro’s not really sure why he opens his mouth again, except that then he says, “I could.”

Roope coughs around a piece of chicken that he seems to have gulped in. “What?”

“If you need somebody. I—my parents don’t expect me home right now, I’ve got the whole summer. I could stay for a while. Help you, uh. Get around?”

It’s a broken foot. Roope _skated_ on it already, there’s no way it needs round the clock attention from some self-invited houseguest, Jesus. Roope’s telegraphing such clear surprise that Miro’s thinking about taking it back, except that now that he’s said it he’s realizing how desperately he doesn’t want to stay here in his empty apartment or go home to his parents’ well-meaning questions.

Jamie and Tyler are smiling at each other like they just successfully engineered a friendship between their two children. “That’s what it’s all about, huh?” says Jamie. “At the end of the day, you’re playing for your boys.”

Tyler casually fist bumps him and hits right on the mark. It reeks of long practice.

Roope’s gotten over his choking spell and is looking Miro in the eyes more steadily.

“Yeah, you could. I mean, if you wanted, you could stay,” Roope says.

“Okay.”

When Miro packs up his apartment there’s not much to take. He’s got clothes, but the personal touches were mostly hers. Once he’s filled a suitcase and carry on, the apartment looks like no one lives in it. He takes the Stars schedule off the fridge and throws it out to complete the picture.

He’s already told his parents that he’ll be in Tampere for a little while. His mom said it was sweet, how close he had gotten to one of his teammates.

Miro didn’t bother to mention the fact that he and Roope aren’t that close and he had mostly invited himself along. He definitely didn’t bring up that he wasn’t sure why he’d done it in the first place, or that he was pretty sure Roope had just felt too awkward to say no. He wasn’t prepared to reinforce the subtext: _you never get that close to your teammates_.

The idiocy of having come to nurse Roope back to health becomes even more evident in their first day back in Finland. Roope’s wearing a boot, sure, but the only thing Miro does for him is drive them around in Roope’s mom’s car once they’ve dropped their stuff at his family’s apartment.

There are many places in Tampere which Roope cites as essential tourist attractions. Miro lives about two hours from here and Roope knows it, but he seems to have decided to push through the awkwardness of their situation by being Miro’s tour guide.

“We have to go to the Moomin museum,” Roope says.

“Why in the world would we go to the Moomin museum?” asks Miro, who’s not been a fan of museums ever and cartoons for a long time.

“I don’t know, Miro, do you hate our culture? Do you not want to celebrate the creative output of our great country? Have you been in America for so long that you feel no national pride?”

So Miro drives them to the Moomin Museum.

They have to pay twelve euros each to get in, but at least Roope pays for both of them in his joyful hurry to limp through a museum of children’s art.

The museum surprises Miro because it’s a little beautiful.

Roope is very quiet. He’s never had much of a chance to witness Roope just existing, outside of the longest of plane rides. There’s a frantic energy to his every move and word that seems to have been taken out of him here, settled into a vague smile and an occasional tidbit of interesting information whispered back to Miro.

It’s still not exactly how Miro pictured beginning his offseason, but there are whole minutes where no one is looking at him, so it's a hell of an improvement.

  
Sightseeing is fun enough, for the day. After they've worked their way through another museum, a trip to the best photo vantage point in the city (Roope took an Instagram story), and two meals, Roope decides that the only remaining required spot is a souvenir shop.

Miro doesn’t understand the destination entirely until Roope shoves a lime green shirt at him and says, “If you don’t purchase a shirt that says Tampere on it I’ll consider you a bad caretaker, I’m serious. I’ll call your mother and say you broke my other foot.”

Miro doesn’t know what Roope’s plan is for getting his mother’s phone number, but he doesn’t like the idea. He buys a shirt.

It’s awkward for a minute when they get back to the apartment. It’s not overly big, just a bedroom for Roope and the master for his parents. Roope stumbles through the logistics of this quickly and Miro immediately offers “I’ll take the couch.”

Roope blushes. “You’re a guest, they’d have my head about hospitality. I can sleep in here, it’s not-”

Miro sits down on the couch. “Unfortunately this is my bed now. Can’t move me, I’ll be here.”

It’s the least he can do since he’s only here because he panicked about going home and forced himself on Roope. There’s no reason to inconvenience him. Besides, sleeping in Roope’s bed and looking around at his childhood room feels like more intimacy than he’s earned.

When he’s falling asleep on the couch, he thinks about it, for just a second. If he were staying here as Roope’s real friend, one of the many he’s made on the national teams and probably lived in the pockets of, maybe they’d share a bed, no questions.

Being jealous of the likes of Patrik Laine is one of Miro’s least favorite hobbies. He goes to sleep.

Miro spends the next morning doing English crossword puzzles he bought up in a Walmart before he left to stay sharp. Roope doesn’t wake up until eleven, he assumes, because that’s when he comes limping out, shirtless and in search of coffee.

“Good morning,” he says, voice still low with disuse.

The half nudity isn’t a novelty after being in locker rooms together. It shouldn’t be, at the very least, because Miro sees shirtless men constantly. It’d been a nightmare in his early teens when he’d begun to think “oh, maybe I like men as well,” but he’d mostly gotten by with an aggressive mental campaign to desexualize locker room nudity.

Nudity in a sun-soaked apartment in the morning was another matter.

Miro looked back down at his crossword. “I made coffee,” he says.

He hears Roope pour it. “Thanks.”

After a minute of the ambient sounds of Roope drinking coffee and Miro writing in PURPLE across for “_____ Rain (Prince Song),” Roope comes to sit down on the couch next to Miro.

“So, I got invited to a house party tonight,” he says.

“Ah. Are you going?” Roope’s got a television and Miro generally enjoys being by himself, so it doesn’t sound like a terrible deal, all things considered.

“We’re going. Come on, you’re my nurse. Imagine my foot falls off during this party, you’d look really careless.”

Miro has many regrets. Being here isn’t as close to the top of the list as it ought to be.

“I’m going to break your other foot so you have to stay on bedrest.”

“Not the attitude I’m looking for. Don’t worry, though,” Roope pats him on the knee. “We’ll go shopping. A new outfit can fix that attitude right up.”

A new outfit doesn’t do anything but make Miro feel ridiculous when he walks in a party with all of Roope’s friends.

Nothing could have, more than likely, considering as soon as the two of them walk in the party seems to explode with people who are thrilled to see Roope. Roope makes quick introductions, in “Miro, everybody, everybody, Miro,” style, then heads to the kitchen where drinks have been promised.

He’s holding Miro’s hand to guide him. It’s likely unintentional, a byproduct of the decent number of people crammed into the house.

“You want a beer?” Roope asks.

Miro chuckles. “Lots of people here. Maybe make it something stronger.”

Roope laughs aloud. “Alright, then. How about a shot for the professional athlete who can’t talk to strangers?”

Miro squawks. “My job is playing hockey, not talking to people.”

Roope laughs again; he’d hardly stopped. “Well, throwing some social interaction in between the hockey wouldn’t hurt.”

It hits a little closer than it’s likely meant to, so Miro just elbows him. “You said shots.”

They take shots.

They, in fact, take a few shots each, partially spurred on by the encouragement of Roope’s friends. Between the shots, Miro strikes up a few conversations, pointedly interacting in Roope’s direction to broadcast that he is a professional athlete who _can_ talk to strangers, thanks very much. It helps that a lot of the guys turn out to be hockey players.

A few girls come to join them eventually.

“You guys looking to go shot for shot?” asks one of them, who introduces herself as Jess, which derails any conversation for further shots. His first few were almost definitely vodka, but now he’s got no clue what he’s drinking, which can’t be a great sign.

One of the girls ends up leaning into Miro’s body. She’s presumably in it for support. Most of them have had a few too many drinks. He puts his arm around her waist, steadies her, and it feels nice to have a presence against him, even if he’s uncertain what her name is.

She relaxes into him, he can feel it. She’s a little short, brown hair and a pretty face. Maybe he could figure out her name.

The next time his eyes find Roope’s, though, they look troubled. “Are you alright?”

Roope looks abruptly less alright, flinching at being addressed despite his proximity to Miro. “Maybe—bathroom?”

He looks down at the girl. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he says, a half-spoken sentence before he’s grabbing Roope by the arm and taking him to the bathroom.

There’s nobody in it, which is good because Roope goes to his knees in front of the toilet as soon as Miro gets him inside.

“Ah, shit,” says Miro, and shuts the door.

He sits down on the edge of the bathtub next to the toilet while Roope vomits. He tries a few soft “It’s okay”s, but beyond that he’s uncertain how to help. He starts to pet his hair twice and stops himself both times.

Roope doesn’t spend too much time throwing up. Pretty soon, he’s sitting up on his knees and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Oops.”

It shocks a laugh out of Miro, who’s still considerably drunk. Roope smiles back at him and flushes the toilet.

“Sorry about that,” Roope continues, as he stands up to go over to the sink. “Not my favorite way to end a night. And you were talking to a girl, I totally screwed that up.”

“Oh, no, it’s not a big deal,” Miro says. He’d forgotten her already, either because of the drunkenness or because he was concentrated on Roope. “I didn’t even get her name.”

Roope swishes his mouth out with water. “God, I didn't either. I’ll figure it out, though.” He walks back to the side of the tub and sits on the ground next to Miro’s legs. “I was hoping you’d meet a girl here.”

Miro’s surprised. He hadn’t considered that Roope might be trying to fix him up, even though he did know about his breakup. It hadn’t been on Miro’s radar until this evening.

“Oh, really, it’s fine,” he says.

“Listen,” Roope says, putting a hand on Miro’s calf, “I am going to be the best wingman. Maybe not her, but your choice of any other woman in Tampere! Name the woman, Miro, and I will win her for you.”

He laughs, but something about the phrasing strikes him.

It suddenly feels important to tell Roope, the thing that he’s known about himself for a while but never thought was anybody’s business before. “Um. It’s maybe not only women. That I would, uh, want a choice of.”

Roope’s quiet for long enough that Miro thinks he’s ruined everything. He can’t bring himself to look down at Roope’s face.

When he finally speaks, though, all Roope says is, “Me too.”

It’s not what Miro was expecting. He’d wanted to share, but he isn’t sure how to handle this kind of reciprocation. He sinks down to the floor so he’s right next to Roope.

“Thanks. For, uh, telling me.”

Roope looks right at him. They’re quite close together, now that their faces are at even levels. Roope’s not breaking eye contact so Miro doesn’t either. They’re drunk and Miro can feel Roope's breath hitting his face, a slow exhale.

Miro doesn’t make any moves, so it’s Roope who breaks the stare. He rests his head on Miro’s shoulder. “Thank you. But don’t thank me yet. Gonna find you the coolest girlfriend or boyfriend in Tampere. Then you’ll have to buy so many shirts.”

Miro lets his eyes fall shut with Roope pressed all along his side, his even breathing resonating through Miro’s body.

When Miro and Roope wake up in an uncomfortable lean against Roope’s friend’s bathtub, it’s agreed that perhaps the best way to alleviate their mutual hangovers would be a large volume of breakfast. Roope adds the “eating it by the lake” element on the fly, which Miro considers to be questionable, considering the brightness of the outside world and the creeping pain behind his eyes.

“Nothing like a water feature to calm a man down, Miro. You simply have to trust me on this.”

He must trust him, because Miro takes Roope’s directions to get to a lakeside seating area.

“This isn’t the only lake in Tampere, obviously, we have many beautiful natural features to attract any visitor,” Roope clarifies, lest Miro has forgotten the basic geography of a city he’s lived in proximity to for his entire life.

“Sure,” says Miro. “They should let you make the brochures for the city.”

Roope socks him in the arm for it, but after, he says, “Honestly, that sounds like fun,” so Miro wouldn’t write off the possibility of his drafting an email to the local tourism board.

Eating a breakfast sandwich lakefront hadn’t sounded like the best possible idea, in Miro’s mind, and he could do without the direct sunlight, but the breeze coming off the water is nice. The slow back and forth lapping of the relatively peaceful lake water is just enough to soothe him.

Miro feels like the space between him and Roope is beginning to fracture. There’s something different about Roope in his home, a place where he belongs and clearly knows it.

“You know, Monty told me the other day that I might want to look into renting my own apartment in Dallas now,” Roope says, offhand.

Miro’s not surprised he hasn’t mentioned it before, necessarily, because they’d hardly talked during the playoffs. He’s glad he did, though.

“That’s really awesome. I’m thinking about looking for a new place, maybe. Mine’s feeling a little… not me, lately.”

Roope hums. “We could be roommates. Pool our money and find some nice ass place.”

Miro can picture it. Roope staying up; Miro not having to live alone. Maybe they could get another place that takes pets. He misses the dogs like hell.

He misses Julia too, he thinks. It’s just that in Finland it’s harder to feel her absence. He thinks she might’ve been right to leave him.

“Yeah, dude, that sounds great.”

Roope’s answering smile is radiant. Miro forgets to look at the lake much more.

Roope and Miro spend the next day casually resting in the apartment. Miro begs off a hiking trip by claiming that his hangover has extended itself another day. They watch a movie and Roope lays with his head in Miro’s lap. It’s not out of the ordinary for teammates or even for Roope, but Miro’s never been the direct recipient. He’s never considered that he’d like to be.

Roope falls asleep like that, with his head in Miro’s lap and fingers running through his hair.

“We’re going to a concert today,” Roope tells him one morning.

“Hm. Who’s playing?”

“Haven’t got a fuckin clue, to be honest. It’s at Tullikamari, which means there will be drinks and we can walk there, so it basically doesn’t matter.”

Miro laughs. “How many times am I going to be hungover in Tampere?”

“However many times it takes you to learn to hold your liquor, I guess,” Roope responds.

Miro kicks his foot, but Roope kicks him back. They keep kicking till they’re both laughing and losing their breaths with it.

Roope convinces Miro that the concert is the perfect venue in which to pair his new Tampere shirt with a pair of short jean shorts. Miro insists that he looks tacky, but once he sees the suede shorts Roope is wearing himself, he gives the idea up on principle. Can’t argue against tackiness to a man like Roope.

They walk to Tullikamari while the sun’s setting. Tampere feels small, having been in Dallas. There are still people milling around, but it’s a murmur where Dallas is a roar. Even the buildings are smaller, all of them shorter. Roope’s talking idly and the city sounds like summertime bugs and faint music, and Tampere begins to feel like a place that he could love.

His arm brushes against Roope’s while he walks, and he thinks, not for the first time, that it might not just be about Tampere.

As promised, Roope’s friends are present and making their way towards drunkenness. They’ve settled at the bar for the moment, ignoring whatever modern techno shit is dominating the club this evening. Roope gives out hugs freely and Miro gives head nods, primarily.

Miro should’ve made an effort to remember all of Roope’s friends’ names, but mainly he’d latched on to Jonne, who’s been bouncing around the NHL system and is about to play in the Liiga. He thinks the transition between Finnish and North American hockey is endlessly interesting, and they all keep up with the Liiga during the season, so even considering how thinking about NHL hockey’s been for Miro’s brain lately, Jonne feels like a safe conversational partner.

Miro buys a beer, momentarily basking in the freedom to do so once again, and then sits down next to Jonne at the bar. Roope beckons him to dance, but Miro waves him off. He can dance when he’s had a few, maybe.

Jonne disappoints him upsettingly quickly. Miro's hardly halfway into the beer when he starts asking about the Stars.

“How’s Roope been playing? We were all shocked he got so much playoff time, but I didn’t really get the chance to watch much.”

Shocked hits Miro uncomfortably. Perhaps it’s just a poor choice of words, but he finds himself looking around for Roope again, making sure he hasn’t headed back over to buy a drink. “Yeah, I mean, he played very well. Really fast, even when he played on a broken foot.”

Jonne chuckles. “Well, yeah. Pretty much had to play through that. Finnish AHL guy doesn’t play game seven just because he’s in pain? He’d be down forever.”

Jonne’s been shuffled around lots of teams lately, Miro knows. He looks in his eyes and thinks he can see a little bit of the bitterness leaking out.

“Nobody on that team would’ve thought less of him if he hadn’t done it,” Miro wishes that were true, even for him. Maybe if he says it that’ll make it true, erase his initial reaction. “But he did, because he cares about the team. Which he’s a part of.”

Jonne laughs casually again, but it holds more tension.

“Man, you get what I meant. He and I, we aren’t like _you_. He said it himself. Different level, man.”

Miro levels a look at Jonne. He’d been so hopeful. Now he mostly feels like he’s in the worst media scrum of his life. “Oh, I get what you mean. There are different levels, man, but he’s not on yours.”

He wishes he’d grabbed another beer before he needed to exit, but he didn’t, so Miro just stands up and walks away. Jonne looks like he might like to punch him, which isn’t an unfamiliar look but is never pleasant, so he makes his way to the dance floor quickly.

Roope’s managed to worm his way pretty far up already. He’s tall enough that Miro spots his long hair reflecting the lights from the stage, his eyes closed as he dances poorly and beams. It’s not a hard decision to start cutting his way through the crowd.

He excuses himself as much as possible, but mostly he just pushes. Miro’s only had one beer, but Roope looks electric and he’d like to touch him and see if it’s true.

Miro makes it right behind him and taps him on the shoulder, and Roope turns around, startled at first, then softening. There’s too much noise to communicate much of anything, but Miro smiles up at him and Roope returns it, pushing Miro in front of him and then resuming dancing. Miro feels pressed in by the throng, and he instinctively steps back towards Roope.

Roope catches him, arm around his waist, chest to his back. He moves his arm down to hold at Miro’s hip, and then Miro’s moving with Roope’s body, side to side. The crush of bodies and sound and lights make him feel better about grinding back further into Roope, surrendering his brain to white noise and physical instinct.

Roope tightens the hand on his hip, but Miro doesn’t stay long. He isn’t much of a dancer.

He turns around, chest to chest with Miro, and puts his arms around his neck.

He doesn’t take much time. Roope doesn’t even look surprised. Miro kisses him.

It’s anonymous and already dirty and Roope bites his lip in a way that makes him want to bite back. They’re in a club and there are people everywhere and they could be absolutely anybody. They kiss, and it’s electric.

“Do you want to smoke a little?” Roope asks him when they get back to his apartment.

The decision to leave had been easy, but the walk back more tentative. The silence in the streets was as much a presence as the energy in the club. Roope kept a hand on the small of Miro’s back, though, even as they didn’t do much to disturb the quiet.

“Yes please,” says Miro, because he’s coming into himself thoroughly and he’d like an inch of separation, at least. Logic is prickling around the edges of his mind again, asking him why he kissed Roope, whether he ought to do it again, wondering why he still couldn’t stop staring at Roope’s mouth.

Miro loses track of it, but sooner or later Roope presents him with a joint, and he takes a puff gratefully. Roope’s lips are very pink, and he wonders if that’s a constant reality or if he made them pinker when he—

“We should shotgun. Do you know how to do that?”

Miro shakes his head.

“I’ll show you,” says Roope, a whisper on a breath. “Keep your mouth open a little.”

He inhales, and Miro watches, rapt, as he brings his face much closer and then blows the smoke directly into Miro’s open mouth, a hair away from their lips actually touching.

Miro hardly inhales. He can’t keep himself from closing his mouth and pressing it against Roope’s.

There’s no sense of surprise from Roope, once again. His hand is sure where it comes to rest in Miro’s hair and his mouth opens quickly. This isn’t the first time they’ve kissed today. He knew what he had done when he opened his mouth and blew smoke directly into Miro’s.

He pulls back for a moment, but it’s to put the joint out in an ashtray, smiling, and then lean Miro back against the couch, bite into his mouth until their tongues can slide against each other, hot and desperate.

“I want you,” Roope says. “So fucking bad, Miro, god, please.”

Miro whines. He’d never—not with anyone but his girlfriend, for years, and before that barely anything but tentative kisses and hands scrambling to touch without even taking off clothes. The thought that he might want something like this, something with a man, had felt like it’d be irrelevant until it wasn’t.

He knows he wants this now, though. He says “God, me too, fuck,” and then Roope presses him down harder into the couch, guides him all the way back until he’s laying directly on top of him and they’re touching everywhere, perfectly aligned. They’re abruptly wearing too many clothes, so Miro starts to take of his shirt, watches as Roope laughs and then pulls his off right after, presses their bare chests together as he dives back in to kiss him.

He moves his lips up to Roope’s neck, consumed with the desire to lick and bite his way over Roope’s entire body, map it out. He gets his hands on one of his nipples and Roope keens. It only makes Miro want to do it again and again.

“Fuck me,” Roope whimpers.

Miro had known he was hard before, but he’s fucking desperate then, his dick screaming at him for still having on his stupid jeans. “Yeah. Yeah, fuck, do you have uh, any-“

“Lube and condoms are in my bedroom,” Roope interrupts.

“Yeah, shit, let’s go.”

It’s a short walk to Roope’s bedroom, but at the door Miro abruptly remembers he hasn’t been in yet, that this was a barrier of intimacy he thought he might not cross. Roope comes right behind him and shoves him in lightly as he’s trying to take it in- the low lighting made primarily by ceiling-hanging string lights, the posters for Finnish bands, a framed piece of Moomin art that he’d probably gotten at the museum gift shop.

“Come on, fuck, I want you,” Roope says as he gently shoves him, and Miro loses interest in the rest of the room quickly.

He gets his pants unbuttoned as Roope steps over towards the nightstand and takes a bottle of lube and a single condom out of the drawer. Miro shucks off his underwear as well, but then he’s just standing there, naked, while Roope's still half-clothed.

“Fuck,” Roope says, again, and he reaches out for Miro to kiss him again.

Miro walks forward with him gradually until Roope hits the bed, and presses him lightly down into it, still kissing him. He breaks the kiss and leans back so that he can look at Roope. His hair is long, wild and curling from Miro’s hands in it, and his face is flushed. His lips are so pink that Miro almost goes straight back, but he moves further down Roope’s body instead.

“I want to leave marks all over you,” he groans, biting and sucking at Roope’s neck.

Roope gasps and gets a hand in Miro’s hair. “Fuck, yes, do it.”

Miro’s going crazy, his dick dying for some kind of sensation beyond the vague pressure of his body down on Roope’s. He bites one of Roope’s nipples and he moans. Despite his desperation, Miro can imagine himself spending hours here, wrapped in Miro’s space, mouth exploring his body.

He loves the idea, except for how Roope had said “fuck me” just a minute ago and Miro can’t possibly forget it. He refocuses his energy on getting Roope’s pants off. Roope lifts his hips to help him when Miro pulls them down, and then there’s only underwear between the two of them. He removes them too, before he can think better of it, and then Roope’s entirely naked.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, because he means it. Roope moans again, barely verbal but enthusiastic.

He’s not sure what to do, a series of desires warring within him. He’d like to get his mouth around him, which is interesting to experience now in the flesh for the first time, instead of as an abstract concept. He doesn’t know what he’s doing in that area, though, so he reaches over for the lube instead.

“I, um. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing,” he admits.

Roope smiles at him. “Hey, you’re good. I’ll talk you through it, okay? Just put a bunch of lube on your fingers, yeah, there you go. I’m gonna lie on my stomach to make this a little easier.” He flips over and then spreads his legs, putting his hole intentionally on display for Miro.

Miro slicks his fingers with lube, sets the bottle down, and stares. He circles his index finger around Roope’s hole, but he can hardly imagine pressing in, “God, you look so tight,” he says, and Roope says “it’s alright, you can press one in. I can handle it.”

Miro tentatively begins to breach Roope’s hole. It has to take effort, he imagines, letting something in this way, but Roope opens beautifully for him. He moans into a pillow and pushes his ass into the air, giving Miro better access to slowly fuck him with his finger.

“It’s alright,” Roope says, “I’m not going to break, add another.”

Miro’s uncertain, because his finger already feels surrounded by an impossible tightness, but he presses another finger in, scissoring his fingers out a bit to intensify the stretch.

“Good,” says Roope, “You’re doing so well. Now crook them just a bit.” He tries to follow instructions, crooking his fingers inside Roope and continuing to press down, and Roope moans even louder. “Fuck, yeah, right there,” he insists, so Miro continues to fuck his fingers into him.

“Just one more,” Roope says eventually, and Miro listens, zeroed in on the responses of Roope’s body as he manages to slide another finger inside of Roope, intensifying the stretch. Roope’s gasping a little.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, worried he did it wrong, but Roope reassures him.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just so much. Fuck, come on, I’m ready,” he says. “Fuck me.”

Miro listens. He knows what to do here, opens the condom wrapper and puts it on, moving closer to Roope’s body. Roope says, again, “Please, fuck, I’m so ready,” so Miro slicks his dick up and moves in closer, covering Roope’s whole body with his own. Roope presses his ass up even further, fully on his knees, and Miro brings his dick right up to Roope’s hole.

Slowly, he pushes inside. The tightness and heat is insane, blinding initially and hard to breathe through. He keeps an eye on Roope’s face, stupidly grateful that he can see all of him even now, and takes his cues from there, slowly easing in until he’s fully inside of Roope.

It’s all he can do to put his face down on the back of Roope’s neck and breathe harshly. He feels like he could cum in five seconds if he actually started to move. He feels like he might die.

“Are you okay?” he has the presence of mind to ask.

Roope moans. “God, yeah, move, please.”

As soon as he’s offered, Miro couldn’t possibly stop. He pulls back and thrusts back in quickly. It’s impossible to calm himself, to slow down. He’s mumbling nonsense, practically nonverbal, “so good, so good, fucking perfect, fuck.”

Roope starts fucking himself down onto Miro’s dick and it’s even better, their bodies slapping together even louder every time Miro bottoms out. Roope’s punching out these soft moans and groans and every single one could be enough to make Miro’s knees buckle. He’ll never last doing this.

He works his hand around them to get a hand on Roope’s dick.

He thumbs over his slit and gathers some precum, working his hand back down to jerk over Roope’s dick tight and fast. He tries to keep up the speed of his thrusts with it, and he must succeed, because Roope yells out.

“Fuck, yes, please, make me come.”

Miro is barreling quickly towards his own orgasm, so he speeds up his hand on Roope’s dick. He feels Roope tighten around him and hears him yell, so he works him through it, but speeds his thrust up madly, until finally he’s coming, barely able to stop himself from collapsing on Roope with the force of it.

“Holy shit,” is all he can say as he’s pulling out of Roope slowly, his dick already feeling oversensitive. Roope’s hips collapse on the bed, and Miro’s worried he’s done something wrong. He lays down facing him, but when Roope turns on his side, he smiling in a vacant, clearly post orgasm haze. Miro can’t stop himself from grabbing a piece of his hair and twisting it around his finger.

The moment feels more intimate than before, face to face. Miro opens his mouth to speak, but Roope leans forward and kisses him softly, instead.

“I’ve thought about this since you got here. I never thought you’d want to, but, shit, that was amazing. So, I’d really love if you didn’t freak out right now.”

Miro had probably, if he were using Roope’s terms, began freaking out a long time ago. Not about this, though. He’s going to have to leave Tampere and go home and answer questions about Julia and how everything got messed up so badly in the playoffs. He’ll have to go back to Dallas and deal with his empty apartment and miss his dogs.

Being with Roope won’t take those things away. But it does make him feel centered enough to walk through a crowd of obstacles if he knows Roope will be there.

“I’m not freaking out,” he says, and kisses Roope.


End file.
